Jagran Engage bags ad rights for new Lucknow buses

The OOH media company will offer attractive bus branding opportunities on the new low-floor UPSRTC buses

Advertising & #BANNER1 & # on transit media is reaching the next level in India, entering the mini-metros and smaller towns. Jagran Engage, the out-of-home (OOH) division of the Jagran Group, has tied up with the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corp. (UPSRTC) to advertise on two of its new low-floor Marco Polo buses in Lucknow.

UPSRTC recently launched a few low-floor buses on an experimental basis in Lucknow. If the buses prove successful, it will bring in more of them. The low-floor buses are larger and, as the name suggests, have a low floor without any steps for easier accessibility, particularly for the elderly and people in wheelchairs. They have separate doors for entry and exit, and some of them are also air-conditioned.

The total display area for advertisements on the buses is 700 sq. ft. The ads will be in the form of self-adhesive vinyl and one-way vision vinyl (for the windows) on the exteriors, with only one brand advertising on a bus at a time. The advertising costs for a month will be around Rs 1 lakh.

Jagran Engage has bought the media rights to two UPSRTC buses for six months and will pay a licence fee for this duration. Tata Indicom is the first advertiser and has engaged the buses for six months. Interestingly, the buses have been manufactured by another Tata brand, Tata Motors.

Tanmay Tiwari, general manager, Jagran Engage, tells afaqs!, "The fully branded low-floor buses are catching the eye of the commuters in Lucknow. Bus advertising is used regularly by brands in Delhi and Mumbai. Now, we are looking at markets in small cities, where transit media is picking up in a big way. We have been associated with the UPSRTC for three years now and this tieup will strengthen our bond further."

Tiwari shares that in the case of an entire bus, barring the windshield, being covered in ad vinyl, the total printing and fabrication costs would be around Rs 50,000. He refused to disclose the licence fee that will be paid to the UPSRTC, citing contractual confidentiality.

This is a welcome move for advertisers in Lucknow, where, till recently, local buses offered minimal branding, largely rear-end displays with low quality material and printing.

For the record, Jagran Engage has been in the OOH space for a little more than two years. During this period, it has developed media in Delhi and the National Capital Region, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Allahabad, Bareilly, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Moradabad and Kolkata.